Tag: Google News

Google Nexus 7 needs no introduction! It is Google’s first tablet device which was unveiled last year at the company’s I/O event in San Francisco. Nexus 7 is manufactured by Asus and it is officially sold by Google via Play Store in 9 countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom and United States.

Google Nexus 7 retails for just $199 in the US, however Croma is already selling this device in India for Rs.19,999 (approx.$370). Today, Google went ahead and officially launched the Nexus 7 in India via Play Store. It is the first device to be sold on the Indian Play Store.

It also comes with a 4325 mAh battery, which offers up to 300 hours of stand-by time and allows you to watch videos for up to 9 hours. Google is currently selling the 16 GB variant of Nexus 7 in India. This device measures 198.5 mm x 120 mm x 10.45 mm and weighs just 340g.

Google Nexus 7 comes with a price tag of Rs.15,999 (approx. $295) in India. This device will be shipped from April 5, 2013. We hope that Google will also bring the much-awaited Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 in India. To get this device, head over to Play Store India.

According to an XDA member, Google and LG have managed to sell more than one million units of the Nexus 4. This is no small feat considering that the handset was announced more than 3 months ago, and has been out of stock majority of the time. While both the companies have not commented about the sales figure of the handset, the excess demand for the handset clearly says it all.

Back in January, an XDA member had found a way that indicated how many Nexus 4 Google/LG have produced until now. The method involved entering your Nexus 4 IMEI number on LG’s website, and then breaking down the resulting serial number to find out the production number of the handset.

The procedure to guesstimate the production number of your Nexus 4 is as follows -:

Take your IMEI number and put it at the end of this link, and the LG site will be show up with a long string of characters like “LGE960 ACAGBK 212KPHG188745 20121206 GLOBAL/GLOBAL N N” and if the string is broken apart, you get:

LGE960 = Phone Model

A =?

US = Country where the device was sold

G = Storage Capacity

BK = Color

2 = Production Year

12 = Production Month

K = Production Country

PHG = ?

188745 = Production number

2012121206 = Production date in YYYYMMDD format

While the above method may not give us an exact figure, it should give us a rough idea as to how many units Google and LG have managed to sell. The figure also shows how LG has been ramping up the production of the handset with every passing month.

Yesterday, the Nexus 4 was back in stock in the German, Canada and United States Play Store. Today, Google and LG have made the latest Nexus handset available to more regions of the world including the United Kingdom, France and Spain.

After struggling for more than a couple of months with the Nexus 4 stock, Google and LG seem to have finally caught up with the demand. It is going to be nearly 24 hours since the handset was made available in the U.S and Canada Play Store, and is yet to be sold out. The shipping times of the handset have also not slipped to an insane 8-9 weeks like before, and remains at a respectable 1-2 weeks.

The LG-manufactured-Google branded Nexus 4 is also expected to be available in Australia later today.If you could not get your hands on the Nexus 4 in the last couple of months, now is your chance.

Want to buy a Nexus 4? Get ready with your credit card then. The Nexus 4 from LG and Google is back in the German Play Store, and should be available on the U.S Play Store within the next couple of hours. The bumper is still out of stock in the German Play Store, so chances are it might not be available for sale in the U.S Play Store as well.

LG’s France Director had promised that the stock shortage of the Nexus 4 will be fixed by the middle of February, and it looks like the company has indeed managed to do that. The shipping time of the handset is a bit high though at around 1 to 2 weeks.

Also, chances are we might finally see the Nexus wireless charging orb up for sale on the Play Store soon, along with the accessories.

Back when Google unveiled the Nexus 4, there was a huge cry over the lack of LTE on the phone. The Nexus 4 very well features an LTE capable radio inside its 9.1mm thick body, but it has been disabled by Google over battery life concerns. Well, an XDA member has managed to enable LTE on the Nexus 4 in all its high-speed glory.

Sadly, the LTE connectivity will only work in Canada on 1700MHz frequency. This means that this trick will not allow Nexus 4 owners in the United States to enjoy LTE on their handset, since this 1700MHz band — known as the AWS in the U.S — is not used by carrier. The method to enable LTE is also pretty easy, and all the user needs to do is key in *#*#4636#*#* in the dialer and change the network mode to LTE.

Below is a video of LTE in action on the Nexus 4 -:

So if you own a Nexus 4 and are living in Canada, you can enjoy LTE on all the carriers out there including TELUS and Rogers.

Google reported its earnings for Q3 2012, with rather good numbers, but its stock price has crashed more than 10% as they missed analyst estimates. Its revenues increased 45% year-over-year, to $14.10 billion. The bump in revenue was due to the Motorola acquisition, which contributed $2.575 billion, while its core advertising business accounted for around $11.526 billion.

Its traffic acquisition costs were close to $2.77 billion, which brings its net revenue numbers to $11.33 billion.

However, its net income dropped around 20% to $2.176 billion, as Motorola’s operating losses weighed down on Google’s very profitable business.

Of Google’s core ad revenue, $7.727 billion was contributed by Google’s own web properties, $3.133 billion was contributed by partner websites, while $666 million was classified as revenue from other sources.

Aggregate paid clicks increased 33% year-over-year, but the cost per lick decreased nearly 15%. Overall, Google’s ad business still seems to be expanding, but at a slowing rate.

Motorola may have been Google’s worst purchase to date. It’s still not clear what exactly Google gained by acquiring the lumbering hardware giant.

Google ended the quarter with $16.26 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and another $29.46 billion in marketable securities and short-term investments.

Before October started, the rumor mill was surprisingly pretty silent about the next Nexus handset from Google. Thankfully, October had a explosive start in terms of Nexus rumors with the specs of the LG Optimus G based Nexus from Google leaking out.

Today, a bunch of blurrycam pictures of the LG Nexus handset has hit the Internet showing off the device running Android 4.1.2. The pictures of the LG E960 dubbed mako first made its way on XDA forums, before Android Central and other blogs got some more pictures of the device. In some pictures, the phone is inside a case probably to keep its design away from the prying eyes.

The pictures confirm that the next Nexus from LG will sport a non-removable battery, a 4.7-inch screen with 1280×768 resolution and on-screen navigation buttons. The handset looks like a mash-up of Galaxy Nexus and the Optimus G, and to me, looks pretty sleek and sexy. It is not clear from the pictures whether the back of the phone is made of glass or glossy plastic, though.

The FCC documents suggest that the LG Nexus will support only AT&T’s 3/4G LTE bands in the United States. Hopefully, Google will also release a penta-band version of the LG Nexus handset especially since the MD915 modem inside the handset is perfectly capable penta-band baseband.

Google has acquired VirusTotal, an online scanner to detect viruses, trojans and other malware. The terms of the acquisition or the amount hasn’t been revealed yet, but it isn’t likely to be much. Following the acquisition, VirusTotal will be able to leverage Google’s massive infrastructure to improve the quality of its service and scale up operations.

We aren’t sure how exactly Google plans to integrate VirusTotal’s online offering into its search feature. For now, VirusTotal has announced that it will continue to operate independently and maintain its existing partnerships.

Here’s the official press release by VirusTotal:

“Our goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the web. And we’ve worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as a small, resource-constrained company, that can sometimes be challenging. So we’re delighted that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal. This is great news for you, and bad news for malware generators, because:

The quality and power of our malware research tools will keep improving, most likely faster; and Google’s infrastructure will ensure that our tools are always ready, right when you need them.

VirusTotal will continue to operate independently, maintaining our partnerships with other antivirus companies and security experts. This is an exciting step forward. Google has a long track record working to keep people safe online and we look forward to fighting the good fight together with them.”

eMarketer has released a new report which outlines the state of the mobile advertising market in the U.S. According to the agency, the U.S. mobile ad market will be worth $2.6 billion in 2012. Most of the value will be captured by Google, which will account for around 56% of all mobile ad sales, or nearly $1.45 billion. The other two major players are Facebook and Twitter. Surprisingly, despite being much larger than Twitter, Facebook is expected to generate only around half as much in mobile ad revenue.

Twitter is expected to make around $129.7 million, while Facebook will generate $72.7 million. This highlights the problems Facebook is facing in trying to generate revenue by monetizing its massive mobile audience, which has been one of the major factors driving its stock price down.

Eventually, we expect Facebook to figure out the mobile monetization puzzle, and become the second largest player in the mobile ad space after Google. The report expects that to happen as soon as next year.

Facebook could also lead the mobile display ad market by 2014, which is currently led by Pandora and Google. While the mobile search ad market will be dominated by Google completely, the mobile display ad market will be more balanced in terms of players.

The entire mobile ad market is expected to be worth $11.86 billion in 2016. If Facebook figures out a way to capitalize on this, its share price would rebound just as quickly as it fell. Google will try its best to continue to dominate the market though. It’s highly likely it’ll succeed in the mobile search ad space, but not social or display ads.

Flurry has released its research on the smartphone space, and the numbers seem to be very encouraging. According to the Flurry Analytics, iOS and Android adoption has exploded internationally. Devices powered by iOS and Android are being adopted by users at a much faster rate than than the PC, the Internet or social networks were, at their peaks.

The total number of iOS and Android devices in use jumped to 640 million in July 2012. While the U.S. and China lead when it comes to active user base numbers, international markets like South Korea, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Spain, and Brazil continue to see user growth.

While the U.S. user base grew by 30 million in the last year, China’s users increased by more than 100 million, and could soon overtake the U.S. in terms of total active users.

China is the fastest growing iOS/Android market, growing at more than 400% very year, while other markets like Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, Vietnam, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and India are growing at near 200%.

While the U.S. accounted for more than half of all iOS and Android activity in terms of active sessions in July 2011, its share has decreased to just slightly more than a third, while the rest of the world has gained.

Android and iOS penetration in the U.S., may be close to its peak, but both platforms are poised to continue growing at an explosive rate in the coming years, as the global demand for smartphones keeps increasing.